I just wanted to do a another Bixby review/thoughts April 2020 version. Because it's been a few months since I've done one and well why not. 🤷🏻♂️ So over the last four to five days this is what I found.
I think how I'm going to lay out this review in sections, Bixby vision, Samsung daily/Bixby home, Bixby voice/service, thoughts.
for Bixby vision I have to say I'm a little bit surprised that the Bixby vision seems to be buried in the camera app more than it used to be. I'm not really sure this is intentional on Samsung's part or not, but in a way it's not a big deal because when I did use/try Bixby vision, I only had about 30 to 40% success rate of it actually knowing what it is that I was pointing the camera at. I will say this, when I was doing the testing I was a little disappointed that in order to use Bixby vision you had to install an add-on in to the Samsung internet browser for Amazon. but for my test I only used well labelled big Brand ticket items and I still had a low success rate of it recognizing what it was that I was pointing it at. I compared it to Google lens and Google lens recognized everything that I pointed it at immediately.
Samsung daily/Bixby home this one is going to be very short and simple I tried the new Samsung daily and I was very disappointed and quite simply put. it is completely useless in its current configuration. In order to be even somewhat useful to the average user I would highly suggest getting more relevant in useful cards from applications that people actually use. Maybe something of the nature of a email application perhaps, we'll known news sources maybe, perhaps some Google services for example.
for Bixby voice I'm going to say just for word recognition it has gotten a lot better. I'm not really sure if it's just learned the way that I talk and word selection perhaps. Either way the service itself appears to have gotten better, but overall it has improved a lot over the past few years.
for Bixby service overall I'm going to try and keep this short and simple and to-the-point as I can.
So Bixby as a service, i think as a device assistant of doing things such as changing or doing something on your device it's not too bad. Some thing that I find really annoying when trying to use something using Bixby, it always wants you to unlock your device first in order to do something in most cases. This Kind of defeats the purpose in my opinion. When asking to look up information such as a date or do a math conversion or who was the first prime minister of Canada for example, it wasn't too bad in giving results. I think mostly because it's powered by Google in the search department. 👍🏻
but we're things kind of really started falling apart for me in regards to Bixby service. For example when asking something a little more specific as to where is the closest gas station is for example, or when does this gas station open or close, or how far away is it, it couldn't answer those questions. bixby kept saying that it doesn't have capsules to do this function or that function, and in my opinion why do you need to add on extra capsules to do these things?🤷🏻♂️. in my opinion these should be basic functions because the average person tends to ask these questions. here in Canada we don't seem to have a Bixby marketplace or whatever they call it nowadays, to get extra capsules. that being said I have also noticed that in order for Bixby to look something up such as "where is the closest gas station" you have to say "using maps" then "do this". you have to tell it to use maps (I even think Samsung maps at that) then give the command. So during my test I did the whole "using maps... do this" and it's still could not give me accurate information. Bixby ended up showing me some random street in that believe the UK. so I ask Bixby "using Google maps... Do this" to search for this location of the gas station close to me. Bixby did finally give me accurate information, but it opened up Google in the internet browser window. but I had to tell bixby to use a different service. thing here is, why do you have to tell Bixby to use a certain service to complete the command. 🤷🏻♂️ What if the user doesn't know what capsule or command will get Bixby to do this function or any functions. Also something else that was very obvious to me when comparing it to the Google assistant. the Google assistant is far faster than Bixby when I used it to do a similar functions just for comparison. It's easily twice as fast. Anyway before I turn this into a rant we're going to move on.
So just to clarify I wouldn't call my self a regular user of Bixby or an expert, I'm just a curious Galaxy S9+ user. So my final thoughts here are people should try to understand that Bixby is more so meant to be more of a device interface to do a function on or to your device. but I definitely feel that Samsung is at fault here as to why things are the way they are with their customers in regards to Bixby. They created a service /assistant that really nobody asked for. Then because of the way that they marketed Bixby and advertised it, making it seem like it's almost a god like assistant. Then Samsung advertised it to be almost a direct competitor to the Google assistant. and well let's address the elephant in the room....forced it on their customers. I think because of that it really damaged the trust of Samsung's customers, and no company ever wants to do that because that's what ends up tanking companies. *cough,cough...LG, BlackBerry*. Then here we are three years later, but I have to say Bixby has significantly improved. But Bixby is still only kind of okay at most, but it can't compare really to the competition because the competition is on a whole different level. I personally think that probably at some point in the next several years we will probably see Samsung do a full fledge rebranding of Bixby. perhaps almost like "third time is the charm". Honestly I really don't think Samsung is going to invest hundreds of millions of dollars into Bixby and just let it fly under the radar forever.
😂 I know what you mean. I should have pointed out that there tends to be 2 types of Samsung users. the type of user who have never heard of Bixby before and have no idea what it is. the second are the users that do know about it and they tend to almost cringe when they hear the name Bixby.
@Tbone there is @ least a 3rd user... The ones who keep giving Bixby hope, taking Bixby on a test drive and crashing 🤦 but hoping for improvement! What an awesome insightful post! Unfortunately it's not the best for Bixby 🤦 Google totally annihilates Bixby for my uses right now 🤷 I'll give it a go again this week though because I'm bored as hellous 🙃 Thanks @Tbone 🤙✌️👍
:edit I didn't mention this but I really like how you broke it down into sections And I think your right the only biggest improvement is voice recognition which is at best best mediocre, as you say... Gotta say things a certain way too 🙈 I get half snapped and say stupid things to google and somehow it knows wuddy the fuddy I'm saying lol seriously 🤣🙃
thinking... you thought... I was thinking... That I thought... You thought... I thought... I was thinking... I am normal 🤔🙃🤙 Niche crowded here 🤪 Again thanks for the post! I wouldn't even try Bixby if it wasn't for you ✌️
Hey @TBone, We are always keen to listen to our customers and to receive their feedback. This is the best way to improve our products and services and maintain our customer’s satisfaction. Thank you for taking the time to share your experience with Samsung.
